There is a huge difference between a moment of judgment between an aesthetic call (which is what the Humanity/Fan Mail/Spiritual Attributes) and a how-are-things-really judgement ("If the tree trunk is four feet high and my guy is fighting with weapon X and and the troll has weapon Y do I have the high ground?")

Oh, certainly there's a difference. The difference is the purpose. Sure, they all have different colors, but that's a function of the purpose. It starts with the purpose, and everything flows from that. Am I making sense yet?

I mean, I've been looking at this old-school rennaissance thing too, and I've discovered that I used to play and GM old-school in high school. Which is way different from GMing Sorcerer and the Rustbelt (which are extremely similar from the GM's seat), and involved a lot more rulings on "what is real" than on aesthetic issues (although they were present as well). But we didn't argue much back then about the modifiers and things that I passed out, because I had a pretty good handle on why I was doing these things, and so did everyone else. Not a perfect handle, to be sure, and nowhere near the handle I'd have today, since my awareness of these issues has increased since then. We did screw it up from time to time and argue a little. Not to the point of shutting down the game, though.